7 ms·

It's great to see things all coming together but this part made me chuckle: > officials declined to say whether this first SLS launch will occur by year's end

It's great to see things all coming together but this part made me chuckle: > officials declined to say whether this first SLS launch will occur by year's end as had been planned or will bump into 2022 SLS was meant to fly in 2018. It's clear there's something very wrong with the NASA/Boeing/Lockheed combination. These companies have perfected the art of milking the taxpayer and impeding advances like orbital refuelling and depots as much as possible for the sake of higher profitability. There's been over ten years of prominent people and ex-NASA administrators calling for it to be scrapped, these people have proven right time and time again, because now it's a $20bn white elephant with little future and everyone just going through the motions until it is shuttered. NASA just signed a new contract for the already developed single use RS-25 engines on SLS, they are paying $150m per engine. This is about the same cost as a fully resuable Starship by SpaceX.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
>These companies have perfected the art of milking the taxpayer I work in defense. Bingo.
- echelon 6y ago
  How much of this pork can be carved up by companies like SpaceX? What about drones, missiles, fighter planes, etc.?
  - airstrike 6y ago
    SpaceX doesn't have the domain knowledge of a defense prime to be able to really compete with them, at least certainly not today. Drones, missiles, fighter planes are chock full of proprietary software developed by the primes and hardware developed either by themselves or often Tier 2 or Tier 3 suppliers. Replicating that isn't done overnight and would be an immensely challenging uphill battle against entrenched corporations with decades of experience and very close ties with Washington, which makes competing with NASA look like a walk in the park. SpaceX would need to hire former lobbyists, managers and engineers from primes and their suppliers and play a really long game to try to get there. Doesn't seem feasible in less than 10 years and even that is an outrageously optimistic timeline.
    - iamcreasy 6y ago
      SpaceX not competing against NASA, instead it was was always competing against commercial launch provider such as ULA.
      - avmich 6y ago
        SpaceX absolutely competes against NASA in SLS case - SLS is so absurd even deep pockets of USA taxpayer can't prevent SLS losing in comparison to SpaceX solutions. Of course, NASA can use more regulatory heavy handing - they had approximately that unfortunate experience with Beal Aerospace - but we'll see if NASA will get to it in the current situation. So far the forecast isn't that dark.
        azernik 6y ago
        NASA is not the competitor. How can I tell? Because if SpaceX wins, it's a NASA check they'll be cashing.
  - neartheplain 6y ago
    Anduril, the company founded by Palmer Luckey with funding by Peter Thiel, is trying to take that startup approach to defense contracting. They raised an additional $200M in venture capital last year. They build drones among other things. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2020/07/01/anduril-raises-200-million-to-fund-ambitious-plans-to-build-a-defense-tech-giant/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2020/07/01/andur...
  - imglorp 6y ago
    SpaceX has already flown classified payloads so they're at the trough with the others. https://www.space.com/spacex-launches-nrol-108-spy-satellite-lands-rocket https://www.space.com/spacex-launches-nrol-108-spy-satellite...
- deepstack 6y ago
  >These companies have perfected the art of milking the taxpayer Glad some one said something about this. It seems like public and private sector has some how magically merged in US. Shall we remind what happens when you privatize some thing public like prison.
colordrops 6y ago
This should be a crime considering that taxpayers are going day to day without enough to eat and no healthcare.
- bad_good_guy 6y ago
  Isn't a large part of it about keeping people employed in jobs that develop and maintain the skills required to create rockets etc? It's both a job creation program and a national security program to ensure there is a constant source of expertise in the area?
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Creating jobs by employing people to create an overpriced and inferior product at the expense of the taxpayer doesn't work in a capitalistic economy. It's just throwing away talent and stifles any competition that doesn't have MASSIVE financial backing, which is why it's taken so long to have any kind of commercial competition.
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      That's only true when excluding international trade and specialization. In the world we live in, it's more often done to ensure some sort of domestic sourcing for national security critical components. With the alternative not being that competition would spring up here, but that it would spring up there. (For values of there that are not here)
  - Clewza313 6y ago
    If you mean "isn't a large part of it about shoveling pork barrel money to selected constituencies", then absolutely. For actual skills, SpaceX, Blue Origin etc seem to be keeping rocket scientists employed just fine.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      With pork barrel it's the government, through their elected officials, and, therefore, the people themselves, who plan these strategic job creation and maintenance programs. SpaceX and Boeing don't answer directly to the people.
nickik 6y ago
Actually the NASA Act in 2010 required them to build a 130 ton rocket by 2016. However SLS was not planned to fly even with a 70-90 ton in 2017.
colechristensen 6y ago
Eh, this goes too far. Old organizations grow slow, new organizations can cut corners and the survivorship bias makes it seem like what they do is obvious and anyone not doing it should have known better. There are problems with these old organizations that had much of their foundations built on an initial project with unlimited funding to get to the moon as fast as possible. Those problems aren't easy to fix. Some of those problems are because funding is dependent on continually changing legislation and on top of doing things, the government-space-industrial-complex has to manage the government relationship.
- Azrael3000 6y ago
  I disagree. SLS has nothing to do with the Apollo program. It's built mainly from Shuttle parts, so everything they need is somewhat there already. If you compare that to SpaceX's starship which needed to develop a completely new engine from scratch, it's laughable how slow the progress is. But as somebody said it's a jobs program. And just because you need to manage a relationship with the government doesn't mean your engineers can't do a good job and there are clearly several issues (see e.g. https://mobile.twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1371488500902727687 https://mobile.twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/13714885009027...)
- chriswarbo 6y ago
  > Old organizations grow slow, new organizations can cut corners and the survivorship bias makes it seem like what they do is obvious and anyone not doing it should have known better. Startups cutting corners certainly has some truth (e.g. the drama around SpaceX's last-minute flight approval for its Starship tests comes to mind). However, that doesn't mean the incumbents' processes are free from such problems. For example, Boeing's new crew capsule encountered problems during testing. Investigating those problems exposed more problems which hadn't been spotted, and this worried NASA enough to launch an independent investigation into Boeing's development processes. https://spacenews.com/starliner-investigation-finds-numerous-problems-in-boeing-software-development-process/ https://spacenews.com/starliner-investigation-finds-numerous... Even this SLS test could be argued as 'cutting corners': it's a repeat of an earlier test, which aborted early due to the hydraulic gimbal/steering system going outside an acceptable safety margin. The difference between that aborted test and this successful test is that they changed the acceptable safety margin.
_ah 6y ago
This is a Jobs program, not a Space program. It's working as intended! Most politicians don't care about Space, but Jobs programs are great for re-election and basically unkillable. Think of it this way: the Jobs spend was going to happen anyway. But instead of high-speed trains to nowhere (hello California!) we get rovers on Mars. Wasteful, but not a total waste.
- conistonwater 6y ago
  This doesn't sound right: according to Wikipedia, the cost of the Perseverance rover is $2.7e9 total over 10 years, whereas the cost of SLS is $2.5e9/year (figure for 2020). I agree that it's a jobs program, but the rovers on Mars could be too small to be relevant to the calculation. Maybe it should be "instead of high-speed trains to nowhere it's rockets to nowhere". You don't get rovers on Mars because of the spending on SLS, you get them despite the wasteful spending.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    Rocket to nowhere would be great - at least it would be flying
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Or even better - without SLS, perhaps you could get two rovers on Mars, a zeppelin on Venus, and a high-speed rail.
- adolph 6y ago
  Alternative hypothesis: SLS funding supports some other program that cannot be acknowledged and actual amount spent on SLS is very small.
onethought 6y ago
I agree with everything... but you can’t compare with starship... it hasn’t flown past 12km yet (admittedly neither has sls). There is a severe lack of heavy lift capacity in the US
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  We don't lack for heavy lift -- we have Delta IV Heavy and Falcon Heavy and will soon also have New Glenn and Vulcan. We lack for super heavy lift, but we've been lacking for that since Saturn V was retired. Some people sometimes count Shuttle as super-heavy, but they cheat by including the Shuttle mass as part of the lift mass. SLS as is isn't super-heavy either, it requires the planned but un-funded Exploration Upper Stage for that, which is likely never going to get funded. Starship is super-heavy lift class.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

>These companies have perfected the art of milking the taxpayer I work in defense. Bingo.

echelon 6y ago
How much of this pork can be carved up by companies like SpaceX? What about drones, missiles, fighter planes, etc.?
- airstrike 6y ago
  SpaceX doesn't have the domain knowledge of a defense prime to be able to really compete with them, at least certainly not today. Drones, missiles, fighter planes are chock full of proprietary software developed by the primes and hardware developed either by themselves or often Tier 2 or Tier 3 suppliers. Replicating that isn't done overnight and would be an immensely challenging uphill battle against entrenched corporations with decades of experience and very close ties with Washington, which makes competing with NASA look like a walk in the park. SpaceX would need to hire former lobbyists, managers and engineers from primes and their suppliers and play a really long game to try to get there. Doesn't seem feasible in less than 10 years and even that is an outrageously optimistic timeline.
  - iamcreasy 6y ago
    SpaceX not competing against NASA, instead it was was always competing against commercial launch provider such as ULA.
    - avmich 6y ago
      SpaceX absolutely competes against NASA in SLS case - SLS is so absurd even deep pockets of USA taxpayer can't prevent SLS losing in comparison to SpaceX solutions. Of course, NASA can use more regulatory heavy handing - they had approximately that unfortunate experience with Beal Aerospace - but we'll see if NASA will get to it in the current situation. So far the forecast isn't that dark.
      - azernik 6y ago
        NASA is not the competitor. How can I tell? Because if SpaceX wins, it's a NASA check they'll be cashing.
- neartheplain 6y ago
  Anduril, the company founded by Palmer Luckey with funding by Peter Thiel, is trying to take that startup approach to defense contracting. They raised an additional $200M in venture capital last year. They build drones among other things. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2020/07/01/anduril-raises-200-million-to-fund-ambitious-plans-to-build-a-defense-tech-giant/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2020/07/01/andur...
- imglorp 6y ago
  SpaceX has already flown classified payloads so they're at the trough with the others. https://www.space.com/spacex-launches-nrol-108-spy-satellite-lands-rocket https://www.space.com/spacex-launches-nrol-108-spy-satellite...
deepstack 6y ago
>These companies have perfected the art of milking the taxpayer Glad some one said something about this. It seems like public and private sector has some how magically merged in US. Shall we remind what happens when you privatize some thing public like prison.

colordrops 6y ago

This should be a crime considering that taxpayers are going day to day without enough to eat and no healthcare.

bad_good_guy 6y ago
Isn't a large part of it about keeping people employed in jobs that develop and maintain the skills required to create rockets etc? It's both a job creation program and a national security program to ensure there is a constant source of expertise in the area?
- craftinator 6y ago
  Creating jobs by employing people to create an overpriced and inferior product at the expense of the taxpayer doesn't work in a capitalistic economy. It's just throwing away talent and stifles any competition that doesn't have MASSIVE financial backing, which is why it's taken so long to have any kind of commercial competition.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    That's only true when excluding international trade and specialization. In the world we live in, it's more often done to ensure some sort of domestic sourcing for national security critical components. With the alternative not being that competition would spring up here, but that it would spring up there. (For values of there that are not here)
- Clewza313 6y ago
  If you mean "isn't a large part of it about shoveling pork barrel money to selected constituencies", then absolutely. For actual skills, SpaceX, Blue Origin etc seem to be keeping rocket scientists employed just fine.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    With pork barrel it's the government, through their elected officials, and, therefore, the people themselves, who plan these strategic job creation and maintenance programs. SpaceX and Boeing don't answer directly to the people.

nickik 6y ago

Actually the NASA Act in 2010 required them to build a 130 ton rocket by 2016. However SLS was not planned to fly even with a 70-90 ton in 2017.

colechristensen 6y ago

Eh, this goes too far. Old organizations grow slow, new organizations can cut corners and the survivorship bias makes it seem like what they do is obvious and anyone not doing it should have known better. There are problems with these old organizations that had much of their foundations built on an initial project with unlimited funding to get to the moon as fast as possible. Those problems aren't easy to fix. Some of those problems are because funding is dependent on continually changing legislation and on top of doing things, the government-space-industrial-complex has to manage the government relationship.

Azrael3000 6y ago
I disagree. SLS has nothing to do with the Apollo program. It's built mainly from Shuttle parts, so everything they need is somewhat there already. If you compare that to SpaceX's starship which needed to develop a completely new engine from scratch, it's laughable how slow the progress is. But as somebody said it's a jobs program. And just because you need to manage a relationship with the government doesn't mean your engineers can't do a good job and there are clearly several issues (see e.g. https://mobile.twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1371488500902727687 https://mobile.twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/13714885009027...)
chriswarbo 6y ago
> Old organizations grow slow, new organizations can cut corners and the survivorship bias makes it seem like what they do is obvious and anyone not doing it should have known better. Startups cutting corners certainly has some truth (e.g. the drama around SpaceX's last-minute flight approval for its Starship tests comes to mind). However, that doesn't mean the incumbents' processes are free from such problems. For example, Boeing's new crew capsule encountered problems during testing. Investigating those problems exposed more problems which hadn't been spotted, and this worried NASA enough to launch an independent investigation into Boeing's development processes. https://spacenews.com/starliner-investigation-finds-numerous-problems-in-boeing-software-development-process/ https://spacenews.com/starliner-investigation-finds-numerous... Even this SLS test could be argued as 'cutting corners': it's a repeat of an earlier test, which aborted early due to the hydraulic gimbal/steering system going outside an acceptable safety margin. The difference between that aborted test and this successful test is that they changed the acceptable safety margin.

_ah 6y ago

This is a Jobs program, not a Space program. It's working as intended! Most politicians don't care about Space, but Jobs programs are great for re-election and basically unkillable. Think of it this way: the Jobs spend was going to happen anyway. But instead of high-speed trains to nowhere (hello California!) we get rovers on Mars. Wasteful, but not a total waste.

conistonwater 6y ago
This doesn't sound right: according to Wikipedia, the cost of the Perseverance rover is $2.7e9 total over 10 years, whereas the cost of SLS is $2.5e9/year (figure for 2020). I agree that it's a jobs program, but the rovers on Mars could be too small to be relevant to the calculation. Maybe it should be "instead of high-speed trains to nowhere it's rockets to nowhere". You don't get rovers on Mars because of the spending on SLS, you get them despite the wasteful spending.
- iso1631 6y ago
  Rocket to nowhere would be great - at least it would be flying
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Or even better - without SLS, perhaps you could get two rovers on Mars, a zeppelin on Venus, and a high-speed rail.
adolph 6y ago
Alternative hypothesis: SLS funding supports some other program that cannot be acknowledged and actual amount spent on SLS is very small.

onethought 6y ago

I agree with everything... but you can’t compare with starship... it hasn’t flown past 12km yet (admittedly neither has sls). There is a severe lack of heavy lift capacity in the US

bryanlarsen 6y ago
We don't lack for heavy lift -- we have Delta IV Heavy and Falcon Heavy and will soon also have New Glenn and Vulcan. We lack for super heavy lift, but we've been lacking for that since Saturn V was retired. Some people sometimes count Shuttle as super-heavy, but they cheat by including the Shuttle mass as part of the lift mass. SLS as is isn't super-heavy either, it requires the planned but un-funded Exploration Upper Stage for that, which is likely never going to get funded. Starship is super-heavy lift class.